May 31, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode, the host delves into the alarming rise of 'pig butchering' scams, a form of fraud that preys on vulnerable and trusting individuals, often leaving them financially and emotionally devastated. These scams are orchestrated by organized crime syndicates that use brutal methods, including violence and human trafficking, to sustain their operations. Erin West, a former prosecutor, discusses her transition to founding Operation Shamrock, a nonprofit focused on combatting these scams through education, law enforcement support, and victim assistance. West explains the severity of the issue, sharing insights into the terrifying environments where these scams are executed and the challenges victims face in reporting and recovering their losses. She emphasizes the need for public awareness, empathy, and collaborative efforts to tackle the global crisis. The episode concludes with actionable steps for cybersecurity professionals and the public to join the fight against this pervasive fraud.
00:00 Introduction to Cybersecurity and Pig Butchering Scams
01:42 The Human Impact of Scams
03:33 Operation Shamrock: Fighting Back
04:04 Interview with Erin West: From Prosecutor to Advocate
06:24 Understanding the Scale and Evolution of Scams
08:33 The Role of Technology in Modern Scams
12:17 Operation Shamrock's Mission and Strategies
15:13 Empowering Victims and Law Enforcement
29:28 Raising Awareness and Taking Action
37:50 Conclusion and Call to Action
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Cybersecurity.
Today on the weekend,
I was weaponized against myself.
Those are the words of Sandra, a scamsurvivor as she calls herself, one of
an increasing number of victims of scamsthat target innocent people who are
vulnerable, lonely, or trusting, and thenmaliciously and viciously destroying their
(00:24):
lives, often taking everything they have.
They call it pig butchering.
These scammers, no, sorry,scammers is too pretty a word.
These are, as we will describe in theshow, evil and ruthless, organized
criminals who crush countless innocentlives without mercy, which is also why
(00:47):
some people, like my guest today, insiston calling the act by this brutal name.
Not to shame the victims,
but to draw attention to the cruelty.
When we say countless lives,it's because it's true.
We know the problem is huge.
It's many times bigger thanransomware or any other threats.
(01:08):
Reported annual losses arein the billions of dollars.
Researchers at the University of Texashad estimated that over $75 billion
had been stolen from 2020 to 2024.
But that's just what is reported.
Victims are often too ashamed toadmit they've been taken in by these
(01:31):
scammers, so less than 15% of themcome forward By best estimates, the
real losses could be staggeringly huge.
But that's on a global basis.
We can get lost in big numbers andforget that each victim is an individual
human being that had their savingsand often everything taken from them.
(01:55):
In the show, I'm gonna ask you to imagineif this happened to you or your family.
What if you lost absolutely everything?
Your home, your savings,everything, , and you lost it because
someone betrayed you, A friend, aconfidant, maybe a romantic partner.
(02:15):
They just took it all and disappeared.
What if that was you?
What if that was your parents?
What if that was a close friend?
If you think this can't touch yourlife, you're just perpetuating the myth,
statistically speaking, someone you loveor someone you know has likely fallen
(02:37):
victim, and the tragedy can be immense.
We've covered stories of suicides onthe program, but even those who don't
consider that awful step may live out therest of their lives in poverty and shame.
So when we say evil, we mean it.
These are indeed organized criminalswho will take every last dime if
(02:59):
they can, and they do it at scale.
These are large, sophisticatedoperations where other innocent
people are held against their will.
They're beaten.
Some are sexually abused untilthose victims themselves go out
and victimize others, winning theirtrust, sometimes their love, and
(03:20):
then taking everything they have.
These large factory operationsare growing every day, and law
enforcement has had some wins, butnever enough resources or support.
But one organization istrying to change all of that.
Erin West, a former prosecutorfrom California, decided to fight
back and to help others do the same.
(03:43):
So she founded Operation Shamrock.
That organization started withjust a handful of followers and
a few resources, but it's grown.
It now assists not just victims, but alsoassists law enforcement to fight against.
Pig butchering.
This is a discussion I had with Erin,and we'd love to share it with you.
(04:04):
Yeah, my name's Aaron West.
I was a prosecutor for 26 and a halfyears, and I recently retired to start my
own nonprofit focusing on this scamdemic
And what, why you No,I, and I, fair question.
You're chugging along with onecareer and what causes you to totally
(04:25):
toss that and start something else?
Yeah I wouldn't say toss it.
I would say enhance it.
So what I was finding as aprosecutor was that we were
being hit with a very targeted
crime wave run by transnationalorganized criminals.
And what we are seeing and whatwe continue to see on our phones
(04:47):
every single day and in our emailare attempts to steal our money.
And from where I sat as a prosecutor.
I was watching the greatest theft ofAmerican money that's ever been committed.
What I was seeing was victims comingto me telling me that they had their
(05:08):
entire net worth stolen from them.
And as I tried to work on thesecases as a local prosecutor, I found
that our country was not prepared.
Our national law enforcement,our local law enforcement was not
prepared to respond to that crisis.
I found that our banks were notready to respond to that crisis.
(05:29):
I found that everybody needed a lotof education on what was happening,
and that was something that Ireally couldn't do from my spot as
a low school prosecutor anymore.
I'm fascinated by this.
So you're working as a prosecutorand you become aware of these, is
this, because you were trying totry cases or you'd hear of things.
What was the information pipeline that wasgiving you, that was causing you to say,
(05:53):
wait a minute, I've gotta do something.
Yeah, as a prosecutor for 26 years,you do a lot of different roles within
the office, and the role I was doingtoward the end of my career at the
DA's office was I was working witha high tech task force, and the task
force is the go-to in Santa ClaraCounty, California, where I live, where
(06:19):
cases are too big for local jurisdictionsor local jurisdiction, doesn't
know what to do with this case.
And so all of a sudden, starting inearly 2022, we were seeing victims come
to us and say that I was involved ina romance scam slash cryptocurrency
(06:39):
theft scheme and the results werelike, nothing we'd ever seen before.
The amount of loss, the amount ofdevastation toward victims was, when
I say incredible, incredible in thatwe had never seen anything like this.
And did it start to feel like a wave?
Was there a time to start tofeel like it was accelerating?
(07:02):
It did.
It felt like.
All of a sudden, once we identified whatthis crime was, we saw it everywhere and
more and more victims kept coming our way.
And I'm a super curious person.
When I find something that is new tome or I don't understand, I study it.
And so I started to do the backgroundresearch on where this crime was
(07:26):
coming from, and I quickly found outthat it was happening at scale out of
industrial facilities in Southeast Asia.
So it made sense that we weregetting inundated with this crime.
And I presume, I'm just fascinated bythis because it was like, this is new.
(07:47):
We knew fraud existed.
It's been there, but these waves of.
Industrial fraud were starting to happen.
When did it pull you towardsthe role you have now?
Yeah, so when we first started seeingit, and you asked in the last question,
I didn't answer it about the rise of it.
Since March, 2022, I have seen nothingbut a massive increase in this fraud.
(08:14):
I've seen a change in the way thatit's perpetrated and that more
and more people are getting hit.
And so from my local prosecutorstandpoint, I worked with a team that very
much focused on the idea of what if wecould, that this was a new type of crime.
It was being perpetrated in a new way.
(08:36):
Let me be clear.
It's an old crime.
We're gonna steal your money.
But it was being perpetrated in a newway, and it was using technology that
was unfamiliar to both the victimand law enforcement, and that worked
to the benefit of the scammers.
So my team developed a strategy for howto claw back some of that lost money
(08:58):
and get it back in the hands of victims
news of that spread.
We were really inundated with victimscoming our way, and we had way
more business than we could handle.
As this increased, we realized we neededto spread the word and we needed to
be part of the solution of educating.
(09:18):
Law enforcement, how to use the blockchainas an investigative tool and help
victims recover their assets for overtwo years, we did exactly that and.
At the same time kept raisingthe volume on awareness.
And we're still not at a place whereeverybody knows what this crime
(09:41):
is, but it is something that I talkabout seven days a week and rely on
others to spread the word as well.
So you're not a technical person.
Nope.
You've now tossed into this world whereyou're starting to talk about blockchains
and fraud and all of this stuff.
What was that like?
I love that actually because itjust shows that the blockchain
(10:05):
is only as intimidating asyou let it be for yourself.
So the reason why I wanted to go into thisspace was I thought that I would be at
part of a team assisting kids, includingmy young kids at the same time, to be more
aware of the digital threats out there.
(10:25):
It morphed into something else.
I was a strong facebooker that,that was my talent in tech.
And so yeah I, as I, Iask a lot of questions.
I watch a lot of YouTube videos.
I talk to a lot of people, andthat's how I've learned this.
And it, at this point, anyone workingin this space has no excuse for
not doing the same thing becausethis is how bad guys move money.
(10:49):
Yeah.
And so the when didthe organization start?
How did that come about?
The more I thought about this crisis,and it is crisis level, make no mistake,
it's a national security threat.
It is a disaster.
It is an absolute crisis.
And the more I thought about what couldbe done, the answers were obvious to me,
(11:11):
and they were educate, seize, disrupt.
And so I started making that mymantra whenever I started talking
about it all the time on LinkedIn.
I'd always end my posts witheducate, ceases, disrupt.
And the more I started to get peopleidentifying with that and the more I dug
(11:32):
into what really needed to be done, it wasclear that this was a whole of government,
whole of society issue, and that allof us needed to be aligned in order to.
To properly combat this enemy.
And so I, I named it, I called itOperation Shamrock because I was
(11:55):
looking for something that had atrio and I thought, oh a Shamrock has
a trio and it's hopeful and lucky.
And I announced that I was startingOperation Shamrock and I didn't even
really know what it was going to be, butwhat I knew was it needed to be named
and announced so that we could start.
Bringing people togetherin a united front.
(12:18):
And so you started the organizationnow what does the organization do?
People, victims come to you?
Yeah.
We do a lot of different things.
In following the principles ofEducate, Seize disrupt, it seemed
clear to me that we needed fivepillars of this organization, and
they are law enforcement, banking.
Tech, foreign policy and victims,and to move that forward.
(12:44):
I found leaders of each of these prongs.
I found amazing people who wanted tofound this with me and I. And what we
do is we are an organization of action.
That's our business.
We are not the type of people who aregonna sit on a panel and talk about it.
We are gonna tell you what we didyesterday and what we're doing tomorrow.
(13:05):
So in that vein, just thinkingabout law enforcement, we needed
to bring together the people.
Internationally who do this work.
And so I started something called theCrypto Coalition, and it is an online
list, serve and group and communitywhere we discuss what is happening in.
(13:28):
Cryptocurrency investigationsand we teach each other.
That group has grown from 85 peoplein 2022 to 2300 today and growing.
It is the place to be if you want tolearn about and have a community of
people who will help you learn howto investigate the blockchain, and
(13:49):
that's just one of the things we do.
Okay so you educate the law enforcementofficers, the people who are trying
to do this hopefully, and hopefullywonderfully with the prosecutor mindset
so that they're gathering the evidence,because I think that is a problem
that, that people don't realize is thatpolice officers are trained to gather
evidence in pretty simple physicalways, and I don't trivialize that it,
(14:10):
it's a complex world, but gatheringevidence in an electronic world.
Is a totally different effortand we've seen parts of that.
I was watching a trial this week inCanada and a piece of evidence that's
electronic just got tossed out.
There's all kinds of issues.
Is that the type of thingthat, that you're working with?
Absolutely.
What we want to make sure is that.
(14:33):
We are constantly giving best practices.
We are reinforcing best practices.
We are educating about the nutsand bolts of how to do things.
This isn't a theoretical exercise.
This is somebody is going to come intoyour agency this week and tell you
that they put money into a crypto ATM.
(14:53):
What are you gonna do for them?
And that's the type of work that we do.
And we are there to set uplaw enforcement for success.
We are there to set up a situationwhere they know what to ask a
victim for, and they know how to goget what the victim doesn't have.
And obviously there's atechnical piece of it.
Does it extend intohelping the victims deal?
(15:16):
I, one of the things that I'veheard so much about is the shame.
I talk about it openly on the program.
My father was defrauded in the middleof the night, a stupid, one of the
stupid phone call scams, and helooked at me and my dad was a very
well educated man, a very smart man.
I. I hope I wasn't disparaging, butI looked at him and he said, Jim,
it's two o'clock in the morning.
(15:36):
Could have been your brother.
What was I gonna do?
Yep.
And Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's one of the important parts of this.
So part of the awareness piece we dois we recognize that the scammers are.
So well set up for this becausethey've chosen a crime that makes
people embarrassed and they'vechosen a means of conveying money
(15:59):
that people don't understand.
So it's difficult to get victimsto report, and it's difficult to
get these crimes investigated.
It's perfect for scammers.
So when we think about how do we.
How do we fight this?
We need to fight it in a way that makesit comfortable for people to come forward.
We don't have any idea how big thisproblem is because we know that if
(16:24):
not enough people are reporting it.
We know it's billions and, andwe know it's a terrible thing.
And I think we know, we've donestories on suicides and things like
that, that have resulted from this,but it's like the public doesn't.
It's like we just wanna put itoff with petty theft or something.
I, and I think that's, thatseems to be the way it's treated.
(16:45):
You're absolutely.
Or, or they were stupid.
They were conned even worse.
You're absolutely right.
That until we start taking this crimeas seriously as it is, which is an
attack on the world's financial.
Wherewithal a national security threat.
We are going to continue looking atit as a, an old lady who lives with
(17:10):
her cats and got taken advantageof, and that's not what this is.
This is a very targeted,organized, deliberate threat,
designed to steal a generation'sworth of wealth and cause chaos.
Yeah, and I think even in thecybersecurity world there's a, I won't
(17:30):
call it a dispute, but I would call it adisagreement on what we even call this.
I know there, there's a term pigbutchering, which is very vivid and
and then a lot of people say waita minute, back off now, why don't
you call it financial grooming?
Or, romance scams or thingslike, where do you stand on that?
The answer is very obvious tome personally, and that is, we
(17:53):
have to call this pig butchering.
60 Minutes is not interested ina story on financial grooming.
If you tell people you wanna talk tothem about financial grooming, they
are going to not listen because theythink it will never happen to them.
I am as empathetic tovictims as they come.
I spend hours a week talkingdirectly to victims and
(18:15):
understanding what they went through.
But my job and my job for the pastthree years and my job until this
is the next Nigerian prince, is totell everyone about this and to get
their attention and help them ensurethat it doesn't happen to them.
So I'm gonna call it pig butcheringevery chance I get because it's vile.
(18:36):
Because this crime is vile.
That is the nature we've turned humansagainst humans to, to take advantage
of the things that make them human, totake advantage of their core need to
be loved, and to exploit that and sothat's why I call it pig butchering.
(18:58):
And I'll tell you what, therewas a big controversy about this.
A lot of people have come aroundto calling it pig butchering.
What I will also say though is it'snot just pig butchering anymore in
2022, this was Pig butchering in 2025.
This is transnational organized crime.
This is what this is.
They are housed in an industrialsize and they're gonna use every
(19:21):
scam they can think of againstus, not just pig butchering.
Can you give us a description of whatone of those organizations is like?
I've heard there's human traffickinggoing on, there's abuse of the people
who are actually conducting these scamsor the people who were on the phone.
Can you just give a picture of what, ofthose organizations, what that looks like?
You bet it's incomprehensible whatis happening in Southeast Asia.
(19:48):
When I first started studying this, Iwas able to understand that there were
compounds doing this in an industrializedmanner, and what that means is that
there were literal blocks of former.
Hotels that had beenrepurposed to be scam centers.
They're run by Chinese organized crime,and they were repurposed to do this type
(20:15):
of crime, which requires a lot of human.
Work to get it done.
So in order to find people to dothat human work and be the scammers,
they had to advertise for jobs.
So they advertised false jobs.
They lured people into coming to whatthey thought was Bangkok to do what
(20:37):
they thought was a live work job.
That was very white collar.
And when they arrived in Bangkok,their passports were taken.
Their phones were taken, they wereput in vans and they were moved into
essentially an armed camp where theywent through a gate with guards with AK
40 sevens, and they were now told thatthey would be doing scam work and they
(21:02):
would be doing that 16 hours a day.
And that was the job that theywould be doing, and that they would
be violently violently handledif they didn't do that work.
And that's exactly what happens becauseto try and repurpose people from thinking
that they are going to do graphicsdesign work to building a friendship
(21:27):
with you and then stealing your money.
You need violence to makeregular people do that work.
The violence.
The violence is stunning.
It is.
People were routinely andare routinely getting tased.
They are getting beatenwith baseball bats.
They are made to beat theircolleagues with baseball bats.
They're made to watchas people are beaten up.
(21:51):
I've seen bruises, I've seen gashes,I've seen electric burns coming
out of these facilities and there'sstories that are even a lot worse than
that and the violence against women.
Doesn't always show itself with a bruise.
There's really horrific thingsgoing on inside these buildings.
(22:11):
, I don't know what to say.
We see these things, we see these YouTubevideos of, oh, I'm gonna get the scammer
and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, humiliate them.
And then you think that person's probablygonna get beaten when they finish this
call 'cause they didn't handle it well.
100%. I think that's a messagethat needs to get out there.
There is a lot of acceptance andcheerleading of yeah let's torture these
(22:31):
victims by making it difficult for them.
But the fact is it makes it reallydifficult for them on the other side.
Can you give me just, and because Iwanna frame this from the victim point of
view as well, and I think it's importantcan you give me a story that would be,
I don't know if it's the average, butthe type of thing that you would see
from a victim point of view in this?
(22:52):
Yeah.
I'm happy to do that.
So what will happen is a victim will.
We'll get a new friend in some way, andit can be from a text that seems directed
to someone else and the victim responds,or it can be, they're getting even more
clever where they will reach out to youon LinkedIn and say something like my
niece is considering moving to Seattle.
(23:14):
I see that you live there.
Can you tell me about thepublic transportation there?
Or something like that.
People by nature wanna be helpful and theywant to share their helpful information.
And so all they are trying todo with any of these methods
is to start the conversation.
And once the conversation is started, theywill drop in a picture of an attractive,
usually an attractive young woman.
(23:36):
And start the conversation.
Sorry.
That's how I know they'renot interested in me.
Oh, you are very funny.
You're very funny.
But that's what happens.
When we look at reality of what ishappening in our world since Covid,
we have a lot of lonely people and theworld health organizational back up.
A new conversation is welcome andthat conversation builds and builds.
(23:58):
And soon people are spending four hoursa day texting with this person that
ultimately becomes their sole confidant.
All of the really psychological techniquesare used to isolate that victim and to
reframe that victim's way of thinking intothis is the only person that I can trust
(24:21):
and over time that relationship builds.
It's a long con, it can go 90 days.
All the while the scammer isshowing a really elevated lifestyle.
They travel well.
They drive a nice car.
They have valuable things.
Yeah, my a friend got involved in one ofthese and she's an intelligent person.
(24:43):
She was recently split up.
Look, trying to date mostpeople do online dating.
And she came back and she'd met this man.
He was living in Cyprus.
He had a, he'd sailed around the worldand I said, he's gonna ask you for money.
And she said, oh, don't be silly.
We've had great discussions, we'vehad heartfelt discussions about
(25:04):
literature, about art and all of that.
I says, it's a con.
And sure enough, thank God that I didtell her that because everybody else was
minding their own business and Right.
But I did tell her that.
And when she asked, when he askedfor money, she mentioned it to me.
I said, I told you it was gonna happen.
And it's not your fault.
(25:25):
No.
Said this is a bad person.
You are not the bad person.
But I think that's something that, youknow, and a friend of mine the other
day, just there's a Facebook thing goingaround and I joke about it because like
I said, I'm not looking for romanceright at all in any way, shape or form.
But sadly, I've got afriend who's, he's older.
He's, we're, maybe lookingfor even just conversation.
(25:48):
Yeah.
Companionship.
Yeah.
And so the, they exploit this, buildup the trust, and then start to, and I
don't think people realize how much moneysometimes gets taken from these people.
It's incomprehensible that thesescammers are really stealing
someone's entire net worth.
(26:10):
There's a misconception thatpeople are giving their money
away to people they don't know.
With these type of industrializedscams, they are leading these victims
to believe that they have found anamazing way to increase their own
personal value by investing in thisparticular cryptocurrency scheme.
(26:32):
They will show them false profitsand they will lead them to believe
that they're becoming millionaires.
And as that happens, victimscontinue to add money and add money
because they see an increase andthey see that it's their account.
And so at the end of the day, it's thattechnique that really decimate people.
(26:55):
I've looked at it and said,if all my retirement money
was gone, what would I do?
And that's what situation people arein, that is exactly, they mortgage
their home, they've lost theirmoney, and now they're devastated.
Is there anybody who can help?
Who can help them?
Can they ever get any of that back?
Yeah.
One of the things that I insistupon at Operation Shamrock is
(27:16):
tough love and being honest aboutwhat might and what will not work.
And I would say that aswe develop capability.
Of law enforcement across the UnitedStates, we have come up with ways that
some of that money might be able to berecovered if victims report immediately.
But the nature of this crime is victimsare not gonna report immediately because
(27:39):
it's gonna take them a bit to come toterms with what has happened and to be
able to get themselves in a position wherethey feel comfortable telling this story.
And that also benefits the scammersso what frequently happens is because
they don't immediately go to lawenforcement, they get on Google
and they start looking for peopleto help them recover their money.
(28:01):
And that is a secondary scam.
Oh my God.
And people are losing yet another10, $20,000 to scammers who say they
can get their money back for you.
So what I will say is it is highlyunlikely that you will recover any money.
Period.
Your only, your best and onlymeans of recovery is immediately
(28:28):
getting that information in thehands of capable law enforcement.
And to do that is another piece that we'vebuilt at Operation Shamrock, and that
is we've built a team of investigatorswho on their time off will investigate.
Any case that comes their way.
So if you have been a victim ofthis and your local law enforcement
(28:50):
doesn't know what to do, and you'veput your information inside the
FBI portal, another step to dois to go to operationshamrock.org
and fill out a report there.
Because once you filled out that report,our investigators are notified and they
will look at your case and they willgive you an answer, which for a lot
(29:13):
of victims, is a piece that's lacking.
They're disenfranchised.
They feel like they're being overlooked.
Nobody's taking them seriously.
And for a lot of them, what theyreally need is an answer about whether
or not their funds are recoverable.
So what can we do ascybersecurity professionals?
What should we be doing to support peoplelike you and organizations like yours?
(29:38):
So what I would love is if you goto operationshamrock.org and opt
in, if you are a. If you are inbanking, we have a community for you.
If you are in law enforcement,we have a community for you.
We are now just developing that thirdindustry community to attack this as well.
(30:01):
But on a. As a person,there is a lot you can do.
In the meantime, you can goto our Operation Shamrock
Train the Trainer class.
We will give you a deck of slides thatyou can present at your local library,
your local rotary, or even to a groupof friends, or even just get yourself
educated on the scams that are out there.
(30:22):
You can write your Congress person.
We have a template on the OperationShamrock website that talks about
how we need funding for victimservices and for law enforcement.
You can tell everyone that you knowabout these scams and how they are
operating so that people understandthe massive problem that we are facing.
(30:49):
Awareness is a large partof a way out of this.
And so I wanna make sure I get this.
So we should go to operation shamrock.organd we can find kits and materials that
will help us be able to explain this.
And I've been telling people, makea presentation in your community.
I'm slated to make one with ourcommunity, with the seniors because,
(31:12):
and I'm a senior, but I think that'san important thing we can do obviously.
Donations.
Do you take donations?
Probably something that would be welcome.
I would expect in anot-for-profit these days.
But the other thing is, andI've said this to people I would
like to get your opinion on it.
I've told 'em it's time to have the talk.
And the talk used to be betweenthe parent and the child.
(31:33):
And now the talk is betweenthe child and the parent.
The lonely parent or the lonelyperson to sit down and say.
First of all, as JohnPrine said, hello in there.
But second of all, you are a targetand you're going to be targeted in
the same way we do with our employees.
(31:55):
You're gonna be targeted by scammers.
Here's what you have to do.
I think we have to have that talk withpeople around us so that they know that
in the same way that we used to saywith teenagers, they can, you could
come and talk to me about anything.
We have to be able tosay that to our parents.
You can come and talk to me about this.
I love hearing you say that'sexactly what needs to be done.
And there's something I've heard you saya couple of times in this conversation
(32:18):
too, that needs to be reinforcedand that is, we know you're smart.
We know you've had avery impressive career.
We know that you have been educatedat the best institutions, but scammers
will find a way around all of that.
And this has nothing todo with your intelligence.
This has everything to do with this istheir occupation all day, every day.
(32:40):
And they've trained with PhDs to knowexactly how to manipulate your mind.
And so that's an important pieceof it too, is I know you think
this wouldn't happen to you.
I. I, we all think that,but it happens to everybody.
And it won't happen on your best day.
It'll happen on a day that you'retired or you're put under pressure.
(33:01):
Absolutely.
And I've been saying this inthe cybersecurity community.
Just stop pretending you're perfect.
Yesterday, my, I saw anemail from my brother.
I haven't heard from him in a while.
He's had some real tragedy in his life.
I clicked before.
I thought, I don't do that.
But everybody is vulnerableat a certain point
. Thank God for endpoint protectionbut everybody can be caught
(33:24):
at one point or another.
We're all vulnerable.
I love that you tell that storybecause I. I tell a similar story
and I talk literally every day aboutthis topic and I was on LinkedIn
and I was having a conversation backand forth with a victim who said,
I, I'm not even sure you actuallycare about this and I was trying to.
(33:47):
Educate that I do care about it.
I went to bed, I woke up pre-dawn.
I see an email.
And the email is from a victimand I think it's that same victim.
And he's saying, I don't think you care.
And so I posted on my Facebook aboutyou and I was like, oh, but I do care.
And I clicked on it andI was like, oh my God.
That's exactly what, that'sexactly how to target Aaron West.
(34:09):
And so that's the thing isthat's how scammers Yep.
They don't, they're not gonna get mewith a with a popup on my computer.
But if they think that I mightrespond to something about
victims, that's how they get me.
So we're all vulnerable.
Is there a last message you'd like toleave for our cybersecurity community?
Be kind, lead with empathywhen you talk about this.
(34:33):
In a way that provides support forpeople you might be talking to that
you don't even realize are a victim.
That is the thing is this is sorampant and there are so many
victims that are not speaking up.
If you are talking about victims as beingstupid or using language that shows that
you're not open to a conversation aboutthis, nobody's gonna talk to you about it.
(34:58):
We need to change the narrative to.
We are under attack and you got attacked.
I am.
I'm an open door for you.
I would love to hear your storyand educate about your story.
So that's my message thatwithout kindness, people
are not gonna come forward.
So let's give our colleagues, ourfriends, the opportunity to do just that.
(35:21):
And one, just one final pointin there is there a story,
is there a triumphant story?
Is there any big success thatyou've had that you wanna share?
Every day?
Every day there is something, andyou can always look for the positive.
You can get mire down in the negative,but you can also look for the positive.
And so what I will say isI'll give you a great one.
I, in this work I've beenbecome acquainted with other.
(35:44):
Other people internationallywho are helpers.
And someone reached out to me in Londonand said, I am working with a British
victim, and her scammer was arrestedin Nigeria on that Nigerian phone.
There was a conversationwith a woman in Florida who's
already sent him $2.4 million.
(36:06):
She's selling her house.
The house closes on Tuesday, andshe's about to send him another 1.3
million and meet him in Switzerland.
Can you help me find that victimand get someone to help her?
And so I dropped that into my cryptocoalition listserv, and within 10
(36:26):
minutes someone reached out to meand gave me a contact in that county.
I reached out to that person on a weekend.
By Monday morning, someone wasat the house of this victim and
got her to understand what washappening and not send that money.
So this is how we fix this.
It is little stories everyday that move us forward.
(36:49):
It is continuing to focus on the positivebecause if we look at this thing,
it is massive and ugly and on fire.
But if we keep throwing a cupof water and moving forward.
It's really the only way forward.
And so we have to lookfor those successes.
Yeah.
And you can save one life anyway.
(37:10):
Yeah.
I would say that we, it's athing we do in cybersecurity
because we can't do everything.
We don't do anything.
Love it.
Yeah, so it's just like cybersecurity.
Take the steps.
You can take one of themand I'm gonna treat you all.
I will be on the site Todayis operation shamrock.org.
Operation shamrock.org.
(37:31):
Go there after this.
Have a coffee, look atthe site and get involved.
Aaron West, you are marvelous.
Thank you so much.
I'm so glad I get the wonderfulpleasure of meeting people across the
internet, and this has been a wonderfulmeeting and I wish you the best
with this and we will have you back.
Thank you so much for having me.
(37:52):
And that's the conversation withAaron West from Operation Shamrock.
I hope you were as moved as I was, and Iwasn't kidding when I said I'd be signing
up in the operation shamrock.org website,nor was I kidding when I said this
would be the first of our conversations.
I'm sure we'll have her back andwe've already got some follow up shows
(38:13):
with law enforcement and we'll beasking them some questions about this
because as cybersecurity followers andprofessionals, I think you'll agree.
We.
May have an obligation to use our skillsto help fight this growing scourge.
I know I say I'd love to hear fromyou and it's true, but on this
(38:35):
topic, I really would like to hearfrom you and get your thoughts.
So right after you get to yourcomputer and you go to operation
shamrock.org and you check them out,maybe you'll drop me a line too.
You can reach me ateditorial@technewsday.ca or on LinkedIn,
or if you're watching on YouTube,just leave a comment under the video.
(38:58):
I'm your host, Jim Love.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Cybersecurity.
Today on the weekend,
I was weaponized against myself.
Those are the words of Sandra, a scamsurvivor as she calls herself, one of
an increasing number of victims of scamsthat target innocent people who are
vulnerable, lonely, or trusting, and thenmaliciously and viciously destroying their
(00:24):
lives, often taking everything they have.
They call it pig butchering.
These scammers, no, sorry,scammers is too pretty a word.
These are, as we will describe in theshow, evil and ruthless, organized
criminals who crush countless innocentlives without mercy, which is also why
(00:47):
some people, like my guest today, insiston calling the act by this brutal name.
Not to shame the victims,
but to draw attention to the cruelty.
When we say countless lives,it's because it's true.
We know the problem is huge.
It's many times bigger thanransomware or any other threats.
(01:08):
Reported annual losses arein the billions of dollars.
Researchers at the University of Texashad estimated that over $75 billion
had been stolen from 2020 to 2024.
But that's just what is reported.
Victims are often too ashamed toadmit they've been taken in by these
(01:31):
scammers, so less than 15% of themcome forward By best estimates, the
real losses could be staggeringly huge.
But that's on a global basis.
We can get lost in big numbers andforget that each victim is an individual
human being that had their savingsand often everything taken from them.
(01:55):
In the show, I'm gonna ask you to imagineif this happened to you or your family.
What if you lost absolutely everything?
Your home, your savings,everything, , and you lost it because
someone betrayed you, A friend, aconfidant, maybe a romantic partner.
(02:15):
They just took it all and disappeared.
What if that was you?
What if that was your parents?
What if that was a close friend?
If you think this can't touch yourlife, you're just perpetuating the myth,
statistically speaking, someone you loveor someone you know has likely fallen
(02:37):
victim, and the tragedy can be immense.
We've covered stories of suicides onthe program, but even those who don't
consider that awful step may live out therest of their lives in poverty and shame.
So when we say evil, we mean it.
These are indeed organized criminalswho will take every last dime if
(02:59):
they can, and they do it at scale.
These are large, sophisticatedoperations where other innocent
people are held against their will.
They're beaten.
Some are sexually abused untilthose victims themselves go out
and victimize others, winning theirtrust, sometimes their love, and
(03:20):
then taking everything they have.
These large factory operationsare growing every day, and law
enforcement has had some wins, butnever enough resources or support.
But one organization istrying to change all of that.
Erin West, a former prosecutorfrom California, decided to fight
back and to help others do the same.
(03:43):
So she founded Operation Shamrock.
That organization started withjust a handful of followers and
a few resources, but it's grown.
It now assists not just victims, but alsoassists law enforcement to fight against.
Pig butchering.
This is a discussion I had with Erin,and we'd love to share it with you.
(04:04):
Yeah, my name's Aaron West.
I was a prosecutor for 26 and a halfyears, and I recently retired to start my
own nonprofit focusing on this scamdemic
And what, why you No,I, and I, fair question.
You're chugging along with onecareer and what causes you to totally
(04:25):
toss that and start something else?
Yeah I wouldn't say toss it.
I would say enhance it.
So what I was finding as aprosecutor was that we were
being hit with a very targeted
crime wave run by transnationalorganized criminals.
And what we are seeing and whatwe continue to see on our phones
(04:47):
every single day and in our emailare attempts to steal our money.
And from where I sat as a prosecutor.
I was watching the greatest theft ofAmerican money that's ever been committed.
What I was seeing was victims comingto me telling me that they had their
(05:08):
entire net worth stolen from them.
And as I tried to work on thesecases as a local prosecutor, I found
that our country was not prepared.
Our national law enforcement,our local law enforcement was not
prepared to respond to that crisis.
I found that our banks were notready to respond to that crisis.
(05:29):
I found that everybody needed a lotof education on what was happening,
and that was something that Ireally couldn't do from my spot as
a low school prosecutor anymore.
I'm fascinated by this.
So you're working as a prosecutorand you become aware of these, is
this, because you were trying totry cases or you'd hear of things.
What was the information pipeline that wasgiving you, that was causing you to say,
(05:53):
wait a minute, I've gotta do something.
Yeah, as a prosecutor for 26 years,you do a lot of different roles within
the office, and the role I was doingtoward the end of my career at the
DA's office was I was working witha high tech task force, and the task
force is the go-to in Santa ClaraCounty, California, where I live, where
(06:19):
cases are too big for local jurisdictionsor local jurisdiction, doesn't
know what to do with this case.
And so all of a sudden, starting inearly 2022, we were seeing victims come
to us and say that I was involved ina romance scam slash cryptocurrency
(06:39):
theft scheme and the results werelike, nothing we'd ever seen before.
The amount of loss, the amount ofdevastation toward victims was, when
I say incredible, incredible in thatwe had never seen anything like this.
And did it start to feel like a wave?
Was there a time to start tofeel like it was accelerating?
(07:02):
It did.
It felt like.
All of a sudden, once we identified whatthis crime was, we saw it everywhere and
more and more victims kept coming our way.
And I'm a super curious person.
When I find something that is new tome or I don't understand, I study it.
And so I started to do the backgroundresearch on where this crime was
(07:26):
coming from, and I quickly found outthat it was happening at scale out of
industrial facilities in Southeast Asia.
So it made sense that we weregetting inundated with this crime.
And I presume, I'm just fascinated bythis because it was like, this is new.
(07:47):
We knew fraud existed.
It's been there, but these waves of.
Industrial fraud were starting to happen.
When did it pull you towardsthe role you have now?
Yeah, so when we first started seeingit, and you asked in the last question,
I didn't answer it about the rise of it.
Since March, 2022, I have seen nothingbut a massive increase in this fraud.
(08:14):
I've seen a change in the way thatit's perpetrated and that more
and more people are getting hit.
And so from my local prosecutorstandpoint, I worked with a team that very
much focused on the idea of what if wecould, that this was a new type of crime.
It was being perpetrated in a new way.
(08:36):
Let me be clear.
It's an old crime.
We're gonna steal your money.
But it was being perpetrated in a newway, and it was using technology that
was unfamiliar to both the victimand law enforcement, and that worked
to the benefit of the scammers.
So my team developed a strategy for howto claw back some of that lost money
(08:58):
and get it back in the hands of victims
news of that spread.
We were really inundated with victimscoming our way, and we had way
more business than we could handle.
As this increased, we realized we neededto spread the word and we needed to
be part of the solution of educating.
(09:18):
Law enforcement, how to use the blockchainas an investigative tool and help
victims recover their assets for overtwo years, we did exactly that and.
At the same time kept raisingthe volume on awareness.
And we're still not at a place whereeverybody knows what this crime
(09:41):
is, but it is something that I talkabout seven days a week and rely on
others to spread the word as well.
So you're not a technical person.
Nope.
You've now tossed into this world whereyou're starting to talk about blockchains
and fraud and all of this stuff.
What was that like?
I love that actually because itjust shows that the blockchain
(10:05):
is only as intimidating asyou let it be for yourself.
So the reason why I wanted to go into thisspace was I thought that I would be at
part of a team assisting kids, includingmy young kids at the same time, to be more
aware of the digital threats out there.
(10:25):
It morphed into something else.
I was a strong facebooker that,that was my talent in tech.
And so yeah I, as I, Iask a lot of questions.
I watch a lot of YouTube videos.
I talk to a lot of people, andthat's how I've learned this.
And it, at this point, anyone workingin this space has no excuse for
not doing the same thing becausethis is how bad guys move money.
(10:49):
Yeah.
And so the when didthe organization start?
How did that come about?
The more I thought about this crisis,and it is crisis level, make no mistake,
it's a national security threat.
It is a disaster.
It is an absolute crisis.
And the more I thought about what couldbe done, the answers were obvious to me,
(11:11):
and they were educate, seize, disrupt.
And so I started making that mymantra whenever I started talking
about it all the time on LinkedIn.
I'd always end my posts witheducate, ceases, disrupt.
And the more I started to get peopleidentifying with that and the more I dug
(11:32):
into what really needed to be done, it wasclear that this was a whole of government,
whole of society issue, and that allof us needed to be aligned in order to.
To properly combat this enemy.
And so I, I named it, I called itOperation Shamrock because I was
(11:55):
looking for something that had atrio and I thought, oh a Shamrock has
a trio and it's hopeful and lucky.
And I announced that I was startingOperation Shamrock and I didn't even
really know what it was going to be, butwhat I knew was it needed to be named
and announced so that we could start.
Bringing people togetherin a united front.
(12:18):
And so you started the organizationnow what does the organization do?
People, victims come to you?
Yeah.
We do a lot of different things.
In following the principles ofEducate, Seize disrupt, it seemed
clear to me that we needed fivepillars of this organization, and
they are law enforcement, banking.
Tech, foreign policy and victims,and to move that forward.
(12:44):
I found leaders of each of these prongs.
I found amazing people who wanted tofound this with me and I. And what we
do is we are an organization of action.
That's our business.
We are not the type of people who aregonna sit on a panel and talk about it.
We are gonna tell you what we didyesterday and what we're doing tomorrow.
(13:05):
So in that vein, just thinkingabout law enforcement, we needed
to bring together the people.
Internationally who do this work.
And so I started something called theCrypto Coalition, and it is an online
list, serve and group and communitywhere we discuss what is happening in.
(13:28):
Cryptocurrency investigationsand we teach each other.
That group has grown from 85 peoplein 2022 to 2300 today and growing.
It is the place to be if you want tolearn about and have a community of
people who will help you learn howto investigate the blockchain, and
(13:49):
that's just one of the things we do.
Okay so you educate the law enforcementofficers, the people who are trying
to do this hopefully, and hopefullywonderfully with the prosecutor mindset
so that they're gathering the evidence,because I think that is a problem
that, that people don't realize is thatpolice officers are trained to gather
evidence in pretty simple physicalways, and I don't trivialize that it,
(14:10):
it's a complex world, but gatheringevidence in an electronic world.
Is a totally different effortand we've seen parts of that.
I was watching a trial this week inCanada and a piece of evidence that's
electronic just got tossed out.
There's all kinds of issues.
Is that the type of thingthat, that you're working with?
Absolutely.
What we want to make sure is that.
(14:33):
We are constantly giving best practices.
We are reinforcing best practices.
We are educating about the nutsand bolts of how to do things.
This isn't a theoretical exercise.
This is somebody is going to come intoyour agency this week and tell you
that they put money into a crypto ATM.
(14:53):
What are you gonna do for them?
And that's the type of work that we do.
And we are there to set uplaw enforcement for success.
We are there to set up a situationwhere they know what to ask a
victim for, and they know how to goget what the victim doesn't have.
And obviously there's atechnical piece of it.
Does it extend intohelping the victims deal?
(15:16):
I, one of the things that I'veheard so much about is the shame.
I talk about it openly on the program.
My father was defrauded in the middleof the night, a stupid, one of the
stupid phone call scams, and helooked at me and my dad was a very
well educated man, a very smart man.
I. I hope I wasn't disparaging, butI looked at him and he said, Jim,
it's two o'clock in the morning.
(15:36):
Could have been your brother.
What was I gonna do?
Yep.
And Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's one of the important parts of this.
So part of the awareness piece we dois we recognize that the scammers are.
So well set up for this becausethey've chosen a crime that makes
people embarrassed and they'vechosen a means of conveying money
(15:59):
that people don't understand.
So it's difficult to get victimsto report, and it's difficult to
get these crimes investigated.
It's perfect for scammers.
So when we think about how do we.
How do we fight this?
We need to fight it in a way that makesit comfortable for people to come forward.
We don't have any idea how big thisproblem is because we know that if
(16:24):
not enough people are reporting it.
We know it's billions and, andwe know it's a terrible thing.
And I think we know, we've donestories on suicides and things like
that, that have resulted from this,but it's like the public doesn't.
It's like we just wanna put itoff with petty theft or something.
I, and I think that's, thatseems to be the way it's treated.
(16:45):
You're absolutely.
Or, or they were stupid.
They were conned even worse.
You're absolutely right.
That until we start taking this crimeas seriously as it is, which is an
attack on the world's financial.
Wherewithal a national security threat.
We are going to continue looking atit as a, an old lady who lives with
(17:10):
her cats and got taken advantageof, and that's not what this is.
This is a very targeted,organized, deliberate threat,
designed to steal a generation'sworth of wealth and cause chaos.
Yeah, and I think even in thecybersecurity world there's a, I won't
(17:30):
call it a dispute, but I would call it adisagreement on what we even call this.
I know there, there's a term pigbutchering, which is very vivid and
and then a lot of people say waita minute, back off now, why don't
you call it financial grooming?
Or, romance scams or thingslike, where do you stand on that?
The answer is very obvious tome personally, and that is, we
(17:53):
have to call this pig butchering.
60 Minutes is not interested ina story on financial grooming.
If you tell people you wanna talk tothem about financial grooming, they
are going to not listen because theythink it will never happen to them.
I am as empathetic tovictims as they come.
I spend hours a week talkingdirectly to victims and
(18:15):
understanding what they went through.
But my job and my job for the pastthree years and my job until this
is the next Nigerian prince, is totell everyone about this and to get
their attention and help them ensurethat it doesn't happen to them.
So I'm gonna call it pig butcheringevery chance I get because it's vile.
(18:36):
Because this crime is vile.
That is the nature we've turned humansagainst humans to, to take advantage
of the things that make them human, totake advantage of their core need to
be loved, and to exploit that and sothat's why I call it pig butchering.
(18:58):
And I'll tell you what, therewas a big controversy about this.
A lot of people have come aroundto calling it pig butchering.
What I will also say though is it'snot just pig butchering anymore in
2022, this was Pig butchering in 2025.
This is transnational organized crime.
This is what this is.
They are housed in an industrialsize and they're gonna use every
(19:21):
scam they can think of againstus, not just pig butchering.
Can you give us a description of whatone of those organizations is like?
I've heard there's human traffickinggoing on, there's abuse of the people
who are actually conducting these scamsor the people who were on the phone.
Can you just give a picture of what, ofthose organizations, what that looks like?
You bet it's incomprehensible whatis happening in Southeast Asia.
(19:48):
When I first started studying this, Iwas able to understand that there were
compounds doing this in an industrializedmanner, and what that means is that
there were literal blocks of former.
Hotels that had beenrepurposed to be scam centers.
They're run by Chinese organized crime,and they were repurposed to do this type
(20:15):
of crime, which requires a lot of human.
Work to get it done.
So in order to find people to dothat human work and be the scammers,
they had to advertise for jobs.
So they advertised false jobs.
They lured people into coming to whatthey thought was Bangkok to do what
(20:37):
they thought was a live work job.
That was very white collar.
And when they arrived in Bangkok,their passports were taken.
Their phones were taken, they wereput in vans and they were moved into
essentially an armed camp where theywent through a gate with guards with AK
40 sevens, and they were now told thatthey would be doing scam work and they
(21:02):
would be doing that 16 hours a day.
And that was the job that theywould be doing, and that they would
be violently violently handledif they didn't do that work.
And that's exactly what happens becauseto try and repurpose people from thinking
that they are going to do graphicsdesign work to building a friendship
(21:27):
with you and then stealing your money.
You need violence to makeregular people do that work.
The violence.
The violence is stunning.
It is.
People were routinely andare routinely getting tased.
They are getting beatenwith baseball bats.
They are made to beat theircolleagues with baseball bats.
They're made to watchas people are beaten up.
(21:51):
I've seen bruises, I've seen gashes,I've seen electric burns coming
out of these facilities and there'sstories that are even a lot worse than
that and the violence against women.
Doesn't always show itself with a bruise.
There's really horrific thingsgoing on inside these buildings.
(22:11):
, I don't know what to say.
We see these things, we see these YouTubevideos of, oh, I'm gonna get the scammer
and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, humiliate them.
And then you think that person's probablygonna get beaten when they finish this
call 'cause they didn't handle it well.
100%. I think that's a messagethat needs to get out there.
There is a lot of acceptance andcheerleading of yeah let's torture these
(22:31):
victims by making it difficult for them.
But the fact is it makes it reallydifficult for them on the other side.
Can you give me just, and because Iwanna frame this from the victim point of
view as well, and I think it's importantcan you give me a story that would be,
I don't know if it's the average, butthe type of thing that you would see
from a victim point of view in this?
(22:52):
Yeah.
I'm happy to do that.
So what will happen is a victim will.
We'll get a new friend in some way, andit can be from a text that seems directed
to someone else and the victim responds,or it can be, they're getting even more
clever where they will reach out to youon LinkedIn and say something like my
niece is considering moving to Seattle.
(23:14):
I see that you live there.
Can you tell me about thepublic transportation there?
Or something like that.
People by nature wanna be helpful and theywant to share their helpful information.
And so all they are trying todo with any of these methods
is to start the conversation.
And once the conversation is started, theywill drop in a picture of an attractive,
usually an attractive young woman.
(23:36):
And start the conversation.
Sorry.
That's how I know they'renot interested in me.
Oh, you are very funny.
You're very funny.
But that's what happens.
When we look at reality of what ishappening in our world since Covid,
we have a lot of lonely people and theworld health organizational back up.
A new conversation is welcome andthat conversation builds and builds.
(23:58):
And soon people are spending four hoursa day texting with this person that
ultimately becomes their sole confidant.
All of the really psychological techniquesare used to isolate that victim and to
reframe that victim's way of thinking intothis is the only person that I can trust
(24:21):
and over time that relationship builds.
It's a long con, it can go 90 days.
All the while the scammer isshowing a really elevated lifestyle.
They travel well.
They drive a nice car.
They have valuable things.
Yeah, my a friend got involved in one ofthese and she's an intelligent person.
(24:43):
She was recently split up.
Look, trying to date mostpeople do online dating.
And she came back and she'd met this man.
He was living in Cyprus.
He had a, he'd sailed around the worldand I said, he's gonna ask you for money.
And she said, oh, don't be silly.
We've had great discussions, we'vehad heartfelt discussions about
(25:04):
literature, about art and all of that.
I says, it's a con.
And sure enough, thank God that I didtell her that because everybody else was
minding their own business and Right.
But I did tell her that.
And when she asked, when he askedfor money, she mentioned it to me.
I said, I told you it was gonna happen.
And it's not your fault.
(25:25):
No.
Said this is a bad person.
You are not the bad person.
But I think that's something that, youknow, and a friend of mine the other
day, just there's a Facebook thing goingaround and I joke about it because like
I said, I'm not looking for romanceright at all in any way, shape or form.
But sadly, I've got afriend who's, he's older.
He's, we're, maybe lookingfor even just conversation.
(25:48):
Yeah.
Companionship.
Yeah.
And so the, they exploit this, buildup the trust, and then start to, and I
don't think people realize how much moneysometimes gets taken from these people.
It's incomprehensible that thesescammers are really stealing
someone's entire net worth.
(26:10):
There's a misconception thatpeople are giving their money
away to people they don't know.
With these type of industrializedscams, they are leading these victims
to believe that they have found anamazing way to increase their own
personal value by investing in thisparticular cryptocurrency scheme.
(26:32):
They will show them false profitsand they will lead them to believe
that they're becoming millionaires.
And as that happens, victimscontinue to add money and add money
because they see an increase andthey see that it's their account.
And so at the end of the day, it's thattechnique that really decimate people.
(26:55):
I've looked at it and said,if all my retirement money
was gone, what would I do?
And that's what situation people arein, that is exactly, they mortgage
their home, they've lost theirmoney, and now they're devastated.
Is there anybody who can help?
Who can help them?
Can they ever get any of that back?
Yeah.
One of the things that I insistupon at Operation Shamrock is
(27:16):
tough love and being honest aboutwhat might and what will not work.
And I would say that aswe develop capability.
Of law enforcement across the UnitedStates, we have come up with ways that
some of that money might be able to berecovered if victims report immediately.
But the nature of this crime is victimsare not gonna report immediately because
(27:39):
it's gonna take them a bit to come toterms with what has happened and to be
able to get themselves in a position wherethey feel comfortable telling this story.
And that also benefits the scammersso what frequently happens is because
they don't immediately go to lawenforcement, they get on Google
and they start looking for peopleto help them recover their money.
(28:01):
And that is a secondary scam.
Oh my God.
And people are losing yet another10, $20,000 to scammers who say they
can get their money back for you.
So what I will say is it is highlyunlikely that you will recover any money.
Period.
Your only, your best and onlymeans of recovery is immediately
(28:28):
getting that information in thehands of capable law enforcement.
And to do that is another piece that we'vebuilt at Operation Shamrock, and that
is we've built a team of investigatorswho on their time off will investigate.
Any case that comes their way.
So if you have been a victim ofthis and your local law enforcement
(28:50):
doesn't know what to do, and you'veput your information inside the
FBI portal, another step to dois to go to operationshamrock.org
and fill out a report there.
Because once you filled out that report,our investigators are notified and they
will look at your case and they willgive you an answer, which for a lot
(29:13):
of victims, is a piece that's lacking.
They're disenfranchised.
They feel like they're being overlooked.
Nobody's taking them seriously.
And for a lot of them, what theyreally need is an answer about whether
or not their funds are recoverable.
So what can we do ascybersecurity professionals?
What should we be doing to support peoplelike you and organizations like yours?
(29:38):
So what I would love is if you goto operationshamrock.org and opt
in, if you are a. If you are inbanking, we have a community for you.
If you are in law enforcement,we have a community for you.
We are now just developing that thirdindustry community to attack this as well.
(30:01):
But on a. As a person,there is a lot you can do.
In the meantime, you can goto our Operation Shamrock
Train the Trainer class.
We will give you a deck of slides thatyou can present at your local library,
your local rotary, or even to a groupof friends, or even just get yourself
educated on the scams that are out there.
(30:22):
You can write your Congress person.
We have a template on the OperationShamrock website that talks about
how we need funding for victimservices and for law enforcement.
You can tell everyone that you knowabout these scams and how they are
operating so that people understandthe massive problem that we are facing.
(30:49):
Awareness is a large partof a way out of this.
And so I wanna make sure I get this.
So we should go to operation shamrock.organd we can find kits and materials that
will help us be able to explain this.
And I've been telling people, makea presentation in your community.
I'm slated to make one with ourcommunity, with the seniors because,
(31:12):
and I'm a senior, but I think that'san important thing we can do obviously.
Donations.
Do you take donations?
Probably something that would be welcome.
I would expect in anot-for-profit these days.
But the other thing is, andI've said this to people I would
like to get your opinion on it.
I've told 'em it's time to have the talk.
And the talk used to be betweenthe parent and the child.
(31:33):
And now the talk is betweenthe child and the parent.
The lonely parent or the lonelyperson to sit down and say.
First of all, as JohnPrine said, hello in there.
But second of all, you are a targetand you're going to be targeted in
the same way we do with our employees.
(31:55):
You're gonna be targeted by scammers.
Here's what you have to do.
I think we have to have that talk withpeople around us so that they know that
in the same way that we used to saywith teenagers, they can, you could
come and talk to me about anything.
We have to be able tosay that to our parents.
You can come and talk to me about this.
I love hearing you say that'sexactly what needs to be done.
And there's something I've heard you saya couple of times in this conversation
(32:18):
too, that needs to be reinforcedand that is, we know you're smart.
We know you've had avery impressive career.
We know that you have been educatedat the best institutions, but scammers
will find a way around all of that.
And this has nothing todo with your intelligence.
This has everything to do with this istheir occupation all day, every day.
(32:40):
And they've trained with PhDs to knowexactly how to manipulate your mind.
And so that's an important pieceof it too, is I know you think
this wouldn't happen to you.
I. I, we all think that,but it happens to everybody.
And it won't happen on your best day.
It'll happen on a day that you'retired or you're put under pressure.
(33:01):
Absolutely.
And I've been saying this inthe cybersecurity community.
Just stop pretending you're perfect.
Yesterday, my, I saw anemail from my brother.
I haven't heard from him in a while.
He's had some real tragedy in his life.
I clicked before.
I thought, I don't do that.
But everybody is vulnerableat a certain point
. Thank God for endpoint protectionbut everybody can be caught
(33:24):
at one point or another.
We're all vulnerable.
I love that you tell that storybecause I. I tell a similar story
and I talk literally every day aboutthis topic and I was on LinkedIn
and I was having a conversation backand forth with a victim who said,
I, I'm not even sure you actuallycare about this and I was trying to.
(33:47):
Educate that I do care about it.
I went to bed, I woke up pre-dawn.
I see an email.
And the email is from a victimand I think it's that same victim.
And he's saying, I don't think you care.
And so I posted on my Facebook aboutyou and I was like, oh, but I do care.
And I clicked on it andI was like, oh my God.
That's exactly what, that'sexactly how to target Aaron West.
(34:09):
And so that's the thing isthat's how scammers Yep.
They don't, they're not gonna get mewith a with a popup on my computer.
But if they think that I mightrespond to something about
victims, that's how they get me.
So we're all vulnerable.
Is there a last message you'd like toleave for our cybersecurity community?
Be kind, lead with empathywhen you talk about this.
(34:33):
In a way that provides support forpeople you might be talking to that
you don't even realize are a victim.
That is the thing is this is sorampant and there are so many
victims that are not speaking up.
If you are talking about victims as beingstupid or using language that shows that
you're not open to a conversation aboutthis, nobody's gonna talk to you about it.
(34:58):
We need to change the narrative to.
We are under attack and you got attacked.
I am.
I'm an open door for you.
I would love to hear your storyand educate about your story.
So that's my message thatwithout kindness, people
are not gonna come forward.
So let's give our colleagues, ourfriends, the opportunity to do just that.
(35:21):
And one, just one final pointin there is there a story,
is there a triumphant story?
Is there any big success thatyou've had that you wanna share?
Every day?
Every day there is something, andyou can always look for the positive.
You can get mire down in the negative,but you can also look for the positive.
And so what I will say isI'll give you a great one.
I, in this work I've beenbecome acquainted with other.
(35:44):
Other people internationallywho are helpers.
And someone reached out to me in Londonand said, I am working with a British
victim, and her scammer was arrestedin Nigeria on that Nigerian phone.
There was a conversationwith a woman in Florida who's
already sent him $2.4 million.
(36:06):
She's selling her house.
The house closes on Tuesday, andshe's about to send him another 1.3
million and meet him in Switzerland.
Can you help me find that victimand get someone to help her?
And so I dropped that into my cryptocoalition listserv, and within 10
(36:26):
minutes someone reached out to meand gave me a contact in that county.
I reached out to that person on a weekend.
By Monday morning, someone wasat the house of this victim and
got her to understand what washappening and not send that money.
So this is how we fix this.
It is little stories everyday that move us forward.
(36:49):
It is continuing to focus on the positivebecause if we look at this thing,
it is massive and ugly and on fire.
But if we keep throwing a cupof water and moving forward.
It's really the only way forward.
And so we have to lookfor those successes.
Yeah.
And you can save one life anyway.
(37:10):
Yeah.
I would say that we, it's athing we do in cybersecurity
because we can't do everything.
We don't do anything.
Love it.
Yeah, so it's just like cybersecurity.
Take the steps.
You can take one of themand I'm gonna treat you all.
I will be on the site Todayis operation shamrock.org.
Operation shamrock.org.
(37:31):
Go there after this.
Have a coffee, look atthe site and get involved.
Aaron West, you are marvelous.
Thank you so much.
I'm so glad I get the wonderfulpleasure of meeting people across the
internet, and this has been a wonderfulmeeting and I wish you the best
with this and we will have you back.
Thank you so much for having me.
(37:52):
And that's the conversation withAaron West from Operation Shamrock.
I hope you were as moved as I was, and Iwasn't kidding when I said I'd be signing
up in the operation shamrock.org website,nor was I kidding when I said this
would be the first of our conversations.
I'm sure we'll have her back andwe've already got some follow up shows
(38:13):
with law enforcement and we'll beasking them some questions about this
because as cybersecurity followers andprofessionals, I think you'll agree.
We.
May have an obligation to use our skillsto help fight this growing scourge.
I know I say I'd love to hear fromyou and it's true, but on this
(38:35):
topic, I really would like to hearfrom you and get your thoughts.
So right after you get to yourcomputer and you go to operation
shamrock.org and you check them out,maybe you'll drop me a line too.
You can reach me ateditorial@technewsday.ca or on LinkedIn,
or if you're watching on YouTube,just leave a comment under the video.
(38:58):
I'm your host, Jim Love.
Thanks for listening.
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